Ableton and MAX
I’ve tried some DAWs and music software to help me take my music ideias out. Has I said before I liked very much LMMS. Is very complete and free. I had lots of fun and learned many things using it. But I have to admit. Ableton Live is Ableton Live. In my opinion is the best DAW ever. At this moment I’m using Ableton Live Suite 9 and I’m completely conviced by its potential. There’s too many things to explore. Allows to create and perform music in real time, playing live on a keyboard or a midi pad, improvising… Native instruments like Operator or Sampler are great for sound desing. And the drums rack are fantastic. It has two working modes – arrangement mode and session mode. They are both fantastic and very usefull. Live Suite comes with Max For Life. It brings many devices and allows to edit them or create new ones. There’s a large community of device creators. Devices can be instruments, effects, and other useful tools. With Max it’s possible to change the way controllers and other hardware iteracts with Live.
I’ve made my last project “It’s coming real” on the standard version of Live. This version doesn’t come with Max. For this project I just added the Operator to the standard version. I’ve been learning much on sound design with this synthesizer. And I’m satisfied with final results on the tracks. Now I’m exploring new sounds, learning new techniques, exploring max devices and Live instruments possibilities and there’s much to do before I start working on a new project. For now I’m making some experiences and single tracks that are result of getting deep in exploring Live, Max and all that they offer. Now I’m starting to feel that inspiration is all that I need to create whatever I want.
January, 2015
Miguel Pinheiro
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LMMS (Linux MultiMedia Studio)
LMMS is a free software digital audio workstation. It allows to create melodies and beats, to synthesize, to mix sounds and to arrange samples. LMMS suports LADSPA and VST plugins.The last version, 1.0.3 has been released on 2014-07-23 and is available for Linux and Windows.
I have been working with LMMS since 2010. I think it's a great and complete music prodution software and it's a great alternative to popular and commercial programs like FruityLoops, Cubase and Logic. The end result of the compositions can be quite reasonable. I love it!
Features:
- Song-Editor for composing songs
- A Beat+Bassline-Editor for creating beats and basslines
- An easy-to-use Piano-Roll for editing patterns and melodies
- An FX mixer with 64 FX channels and arbitrary number of effects allow unlimited mixing possibilities
- Many powerful instrument and effect plugins out of the box
- Full user-defined track-based automation and computer-controlled automation sources
- Compatible with many standards such as SoundFont2, VST(i), LADSPA, GUS Patches, and MIDI
- Import of MIDI files, Hydrogen project files and FL Studio ® project files
Audacity
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Audacity is a free software developed by a group of volunteers and distribute under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was started by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg in the fall of 1999 at Carnegie Mellon University and it was released as open-source software at SourceForge.net in May of 200. You can use it, study how it works, improve it and share it with others.
The last version of Audacity, 2.0.5 has been released on 2013-10-21.
I think that Audacity is an excellent choice for audio recording and audio editing. It's easy to use and powerful and allows to achieve very good results. I have been use it to make some samples and to master my own material.
Features:
- Device Toolbar manages multiple input and output devices.
- Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during and after recording. Clipping can be displayed in the waveform or in a label track.
- Record from microphone, line input, USB/Firewire devices and others.
- Record computer playback on Windows Vista and later by choosing "Windows WASAPI" host in Device Toolbar then a "loopback" input.
- Timer Record and Sound Activated Recording features.
- Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.
- Record at very low latencies on supported devices on Linux by using Audacity with JACK.
- Record at sample rates up to 192,000 Hz (subject to appropriate hardware and host selection). Up to 384,000 Hz is supported for appropriate high-resolution devices on Mac OS X and Linux.
- Record at 24-bit depth on Windows (using Windows WASAPI host), Mac OS X or Linux (using ALSA or JACK host).
- Record multiple channels at once (subject to appropriate hardware).
- Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, FLAC and Ogg Vorbis files.
- Fast "On-Demand" import of WAV or AIFF files (letting you start work with the files almost immediately) if read directly from source.
- Import and export all formats supported by libsndfile such as GSM 6.10, 32-bit and 64-bit float WAV and U/A-Law.
- Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files) using libmad.
- Import raw (headerless) audio files using the "Import Raw" command.
- Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to audio CD.
- Export MP3 files with the optional LAME encoder library.
- Import and export AC3, M4A/M4R (AAC) and WMA with the optional FFmpeg library (this also supports import of audio from video files).
- Supports 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit (floating point) samples (the latter preserves samples in excess of full scale).
- Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality resampling and dithering.
- Tracks with different sample rates or formats are converted automatically in real time.
- Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste and Delete.
- Unlimited sequential Undo (and Redo) to go back any number of steps.
- Edit and mix large numbers of tracks.
- Multiple clips are allowed per track.
- Label tracks with selectable Sync-Lock Tracks feature for keeping tracks and labels synchronized.
- Draw Tool to alter individual sample points.
- Envelope Tool to fade the volume up or down smoothly.
- Automatic Crash Recovery in the event of abnormal program termination.
- Tracks and selections can be fully manipulated using the keyboard.
- Large range of keyboard shortcuts.
- Excellent support for JAWS, NVDA and other screen readers on Windows, and for VoiceOver on Mac.
- Change the pitch without altering the tempo (or vice-versa).
- Remove static, hiss, hum or other constant background noises.
- Alter frequencies with Equalization, Bass and Treble, High/Low Pass and Notch Filter effects.
- Adjust volume with Compressor, Amplify, Normalize, Fade In/Fade Out and Adjustable Fade effects.
- Remove Vocals from suitable stereo tracks.
- Create voice-overs for podcasts or DJ sets using Auto Duck effect.
- Other built-in effects include:
- Echo
- Paulstretch (extreme stretch)
- Phaser
- Reverb
- Reverse
- Truncate Silence
- Wahwah
- Run "Chains" of effects on a project or multiple files in Batch Processing mode.
- Support for LADSPA, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit effect plug-ins.
- Effects written in the Nyquist programming language can be easily modified in a text editor - or you can even write your own plug-in.
- Spectrogram view modes for visualizing frequencies.
- "Plot Spectrum" command for detailed frequency analysis.
- "Sample Data Export" for exporting a file containing amplitude values for each sample in the selection.
- Contrast Analysis for analyzing average rms volume differences between foreground speech and background music.
- Support for adding VAMP analysis plug-ins.
